Australia's 130 year old public education solution to the problem of social cohesion is the answer for the problems of social cohesion being faced by England and Wales.

In education the UK is facing up to the problems articulated and dealt with by the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century. The Australian Founding Fathers recognised the problem of States within States, division instead of cohesion, segregation instead of integration.

On 10 September 2007, Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for the Department for Children, Schools and Families launched a paper entitled Faith in the System. In his speech he declared that:

From this month all schools have a duty to promote community cohesion. 

The official paper, Faith in the System, contains 23 pages and the document was endorsed by 16 religious groups in the UK together with the Department for Children, Schools and Families. These religious groups included the Catholic Education Service, the Church of England Board of Education, the Seventh Day Adventists, the Methodist Church, Greek Orthodox Church, Board of Deputies of British Jews, Association of Muslim Schools in the UK, Muslim Council of Britain, Network of Sikh organisations and the Hindu Council of the UK.

 The colonial solution to this problem was both simple and effective. If you want integration you put children into school together in a free, secular and university public school system which is owned, funded and controlled by a secular State.

They also withdrew any taxpayer funding from religious schools which segregate children on the basis of religion or ability to pay. In other words, they didn't go round the segregation mulberry bush to try and get to integration. They integrated. Full stop.

 They realised that religious schools create States within the State, thereby undermining the secular State.

If the state wishes to promote the integration of its citizens rather than have them warring on the basis of religion, they need to give public funding to public school, not schools whose very rationale is the segregation of children on the basis of religion.

 The Australian Founding Fathers declared clearly the position of ' no money to church and faith schools' and set up a public education system with the major political purpose of providing social cohesion amongst the citizens of the next generation.

This educational, social and political objective was clearly stated by  Edmund Barton, the first Prime Minister of Australia and one of the first Justices of the High Court in the New South Wales Parliament in 1879:

I say further that our system of education should unsectarian. I cannot support for a moment any system of education which in the name of denominationalism or any other name, draws funds from the coffers of the State manifestly for the propagation of creeds and dogmas widely divergent. Taxpayers ought no to be called upon to support a system of that kind. '....holding the opinions I do as to the functions of the State and Church, believing that the concern of the State is merely temporal, and that the concern of the Church is something widely different from that,- I say, let each go on in the exercise of their proper functions.- Let the Church continue to fit us and our children for a better world and let the State seek to promote the elements of social harmony and material prosperity. Let them do their work separately, although, if you will, side by side. See Press Release 166 at www.adogs.info/pr166.htm .

Unfortunately, in the 1960s, the powerful Church School interest destroyed the Australian educational settement of the

nineteenth century and Australian public education is in danger of being privatised as the private school interest and ideology  infiltrates our institutional structures and persuades the State to abdicate and abnegate its educational responsibilities.

Any talk about integration and cohesion using religious men is an absurdity. How can you integrate when you segregate? How can you protect children from warring factions when you put the warring factions in charge of their minds and bodies?

 It is a tragedy for Australia and the educational opportunities of our children that our New Labour Rudd 07 politicians, like Roman Catholic convert Blair, mouth integration while their  actions  mean divide and rule begins at school.

 You can fool some of the people some of the time if they believe it is in their best interest. You cant fool all of the people all of the time.

 Don't be fooled. If we want a cohesive society, we cannot give public funding to religious schools which practice religious apartheid. The only real opportunities for our children's education and future in a cohesive society lies in a strong  public school system which is: public in purpose, outcome, access, ownership, control, funding, accountability and provision.

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